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Junk Food

Bernie loved junk food. Not any particular type of junk food, but anything that bore the description “junk food”.

How this came to be, Bernie didn’t know. In reality, it was a case of money, repetition, and flavour engineering. Bernie was poor, and junk food was cheap. He could buy a bag of cookies for significantly less than the equivalent calories in healthy food. There was enough vitamin C in “Orange drink” to stave off scurvy (barely), and for everything else, well, he made do.

Now, though, as soon as someone said, “That’s junk food”, Bernie had to have it. Potato chips and donuts were his daily starch. Chocolate bars were his vegetable. Protein and dairy came from his daily jar of spreadable cheese.

As a result, Bernie was overweight, deeply unhappy, but financially secure. Indeed, his bank account grew, albeit very slowly, over the course of his life, so that, by the time of his retirement working the cash register at the local convenience store, he had enough to live off for fifteen years, after which he could start living on his old age pension. By his own math, if he had bothered to do it (he didn’t), he would even be able to save up more with the old age pension, eating as he did. Assuming, of course, he lived that long.